Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale: I thank the Minister for his Answer and also for the work that he and UK diplomats have done to try to take this issue forward. However, the reality is that, more than five years after thousands of Yazidi women and girl children were enslaved for the purposes of daily rape and beating by IS fighters, and nearly two years since the supposed defeat of Islamic State in Iraq, there have been no prosecutions in the United States, the United Kingdom or most European courts of nationals, or their return for prosecution to their own countries. There have been no victims’ statements or charges for these crimes in the Iraqi courts that have tried some IS fighters for terrorism, and, as a result, there is a desperate feeling among the Yazidi families and the returnees that there has been no justice for them that would deter similar incidents in the future. The UK supports the proposal for a hybrid court, perhaps set up through treaty between the Iraqi authorities and the United Nations, that would ensure that at least the most senior ISIS figures who were involved in these depraved crimes could be put on trial and a record could be set that might deter others from carrying out such horrific acts in the future.

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood: My Lords, I am another lawyer, but I must have been mistaken for one who has worked on this particular problem. Indeed, I was not alive to it until I came into the Chamber this afternoon, so I am not another Lord Pannick or Lord Anderson of Ipswich—I am genuinely seeking a little clarification.
Perhaps I may focus the Minister’s attention on paragraph 7.8 of the Explanatory Memorandum. As I understand it, the whole question arises only if we leave with no deal, but the instrument is not required on leaving with no deal as matters currently stand, and there is nothing inconsistent with the directly effective rights currently enjoyed. The whole object, as I understand it from paragraph 7.8, is to prepare the ground so as to allow the Government, at some future date,
“to make policies and legislative changes which depart from the directly effective rights”.
Paragraph 4 of the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee states that it would,
“enable the Department to introduce new policies and regulations that depart from this approach, for example by introducing new restrictions on EEA, Swiss and Turkish nationals or businesses”.
My question is this. If there comes, post leaving with no deal, a future point at which the Government do want to make policy and legislative changes to restrict rights, can they not at the same time as they would need the legislation to introduce those policies and legislative changes also do what is necessary to disapply what otherwise, absent this instrument, would be the continuing directly effective rights? In other words, why can we not wait until we see what future restrictive policies or legislation the Government would like to introduce post leaving with no deal? Can we not leave it until then to make any change that is then required and which is intended, by this instrument, to anticipate those future possibilities?